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Hi, I'm Tim. The author of stretchy.org, a website about making catsuits. Here's how to make a catsuit.
You need two tape measures
and the person who's going to wear the catsuit.
That would be me in this case.
While measuring you should wear what you'll be wearing under the suit.
I'm wearing cycle shorts and this shirt because they're thin enough to ignore
and YouTube doesn't like nakedness. I'm keeping one end of the tape measure fixed by treading
on it so I can pull it taut while reading and I'll be using the other measure for the various
circumferences on the way up.
Now I like cat suits with built-in socks and making your lowest leg measurement from your
ankle bone... where I'm pointing
makes it obvious how to join the foot measurements on later
so here's the first measurement being taken the distance up from my heel and the distance
around my ankle.
if you have a friend to copy the measurements as you call them out that's really helpful
but if you're too shy or don't have any friends
it's much faster to record your voice than breaking each time to write the numbers down
I was reading my measurement out to the camera
but you're not really interested in hearing those so I've dubbed this commentary on top
Now I have fairly well-developed calfs because I cycle too much
so I take enough measurements to describe the curves
so there... below my knee
above my knee, and along my thigh.
you might notice not all my measurements are perfectly horizontal or vertical
that's ok as long as they're mostly right because measuring from the heel each time prevents
errors accumulating, because lycra's pretty forgiving, and because we'll be scaling the
measurements down a bit anyway.
Once I've measured around the very top of my leg... there...
Move the camera?
Very good(!)
I wrap the take around both legs at exactly the same height and that's the first body measurement
I then slide it up to measure my bum's widest point because that's a curve I need to
fit well
and then continue upwards along my body to my underarms. If I had a bust, I'd need to
take more measurements for that
but I wasn't a lady last time I checked.
during this measurement takes longer than the video. You can see I'm cutting because
I didn't want you to get bored but the good news is you only need to take your measurements once
unless you gain or lose lots of weight or make a catsuit-making video.
You can take them more often, of course, if it gives you the jollies,
but please keep your taylor-related roleplay fetishes between yourself and your partner
because I'm not interested!
So to measure my over-the-shoulder distance, I held the white measure around me from when it was
right up around my under-arms
and then tugged the yellow one up so its end was just tucked in at the front
and then reached behind to grab where the two measures meet again... There we go.
Now, around my neck
and read that carefully off the measure
very good(!)
Just a reminder:
don't measure yourself with baggy jeans or jacket on: only what you'd be wearing underneath,
or something thin enough not to make a difference
So this is measuring from my knuckles to the side of my neck with my arm up, and then down, to capture
the difference in length over my shoulder
in the two positions. It's a couple of inches.
And now I'm measuring my arm
circumferences and distances from my knuckles
first to the wrist
then half way to the elbow
elbow
halfway up bicep
and at the shoulder
told you it was boring...
(sung) Polyphony...
(sung) Polyphony...
(sung) Polyphony...
(sung) Polyphony...
You could get your friend to measure you as well that would be even more fun
especially the inside leg.
Here I am measuring my foot from my ankle bone
you remember the first leg measurement was just above the bone... stop that!
to my big toe.
If I were picky I'd worry that the ankle bone is higher than the inner one
but I like to make the sock a little loose so my toes aren't squished
and now measure the width of heel that I stand on.
That's called a T-square
and you get them in art shops for technical drawing.
This is a weird measurement
I'm measuring both my chest's apparent width which is the width of my shadow's chest on a sunny day
and also the width where I can't wedge my finger between my chest and the T-square
for convenience I only measure half-widths
and for me it's eighteen centimetres half shadow width
and nine centimetres half wedge width
I threatened to tell you about scaling
so here we go
you have to make the cat suit a bit smaller than your real body size
so it doesn't look wrinkly on you.
ninety percent is a good starter scaling for most stretch fabric
so use that for now.
These are the measurements for my leg
to scale them by ninety percent multiply all the numbers by nought point nine
if we were scaling by eighty five percent it will be nought point eight five
when you're more experienced you might decide to make the body length shorter or the thighs
looser or something
Here is the first circumference at ninety percent
and here is the first distance to heel at ninety percent
Do that for all of them
Now I find it useful to divide all leg and arm circumferences in two,
and all the body circumference in four, for reasons that will become clear in the next video
I don't scale the foot measurements because I don't like my toes squished
I also find it useful to work out the distances between the circumferences:
just subtract the distance to heel associated with each circumference from the one above it
because all this maths is a nuisance I've created a web page that will calculate it
and the URL is given in green above.
You want about halfway down that webpage
the red column here is the scaled half circumferences
half because of the 'DIV equals two' above the word 'heel' on the left
if it's said 'DIV equals four' the red column would be scaled quarter circumferences.
The yellow column is the distances between the circumferences. And of course the word 'heel' on the
left should actually read 'ankle'.
But I'm not gonna go back and edit that!